The present invention relates to determining, pricing, and/or providing well servicing treatments. More particularly, the present invention relates to novel well characteristic methodologies for determining, pricing, and/or providing well servicing treatments and data processing systems therefor.
Generally, well servicing treatments include a wide variety of subterranean operations that may be performed in oil, gas, geothermal, and/or water wells, such as drilling, completion, and workover operations. The drilling, completion, and workover operations may include, but are not limited to, drilling, fracturing, acidizing, logging, cementing, gravel packing, perforating, and conformance operations. Many of these well servicing treatments are designed to enhance and/or facilitate the recovery of desirable fluids from a subterranean well.
Oilfield service companies and the like, who provide well servicing treatments, operate in a competitive environment, often involving competition from other companies providing the same or similar services. Consequently, oilfield service companies desire to accurately and cost-effectively determine the price of their respective well servicing treatments to maintain their competitiveness. Conventionally, the price for well servicing treatments have been determined based, inter alia, on the particular well servicing treatment to be performed. For instance, well servicing treatments have been priced based on the component cost of the treatment fluid. The price of the well servicing treatment may include pricing for chemicals, tools, labor, and/or equipment involved in the well servicing treatment. For instance, in a cementing operation, an optimal cement composition for the operation may first be determined using past well data or characteristics about the field. Next, the price of the cement composition may be determined based on the component cost of the optimal cement composition, the total amount of the cement composition needed for the operation, the labor and equipments costs that may be associated with the operation, and desired profitability, taking into account any discounts that may apply. To determine a price for a desired well servicing treatment, the labor and equipment costs associated with the particular well servicing treatment should be taken into account.
There are drawbacks to the current pricing methodologies. For example, current methodologies generally require a determination of the desired formulation of the treatment fluid prior to the determination of the price of the well servicing treatment. This may result in inaccuracies in the determined price and/or the use of formulations that are not the most desirable and/or cost-effective. Also, current methodologies do not allow formulation changes (and corresponding price changes) to be made in a real-time context. Thus, there may be undesirable delays between the submission of information by the customer relating to the well servicing treatment and the provision of a price for the well servicing treatment to the customer, and in determining and providing the well servicing treatment. Furthermore, current pricing methodologies generally do not effectively utilize computer systems and wireless area networks to generate and transmit prices of well servicing treatments.